Transgender Rights – Campaign summary so far
As of December 2010, here is what we have accomplished last term for trans rights:
Our Campaigns Officer made a submission to the Government’s Gender Recognition Advisory Group calling for law reform laws pertaining to recognition of gender for those who fall under the transgender and intersex umbrellas.
This submission resulted in our Campaigns Officer being invited to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin to present and discuss our LGBT Society’s submission.
Points raised included calling for protections for transgender and intersex people when it comes to employment and hate crimes. It was suggested that ”gender expression” be added to all protection laws where ”gender” is mentioned.
It was proposed that persons who indentify as trans or intersex should be able to self select as opposed to having to be ‘diagnosed’ by a doctor
It was proposed that the process should be timely and respectful and that all new laws should be inclusive – not just for transsexuals
Attention was drawn to feedback from Trans members within our LGBT Society including the issue of name-change and gender-change on documents and identification, the lack of supports and resources, the distances to access such resources, the high-costs of treatments, the high rate of depression and attempted suicide for trans individuals and the lack of supports and trained professionals in this area.
The Gender Recognition Advisory Group will be advising the Government in future as to how to propose and draft these new laws and our submission and presentation will be used to help them frame their recommendations.
Other accomplishments in this campaign include:
A feature article in the Express newspaper on including the ‘T’ in LGBT with quotes from an academic in this field and a tran man who studies at UCC
A poster was created to higlight ‘words that are transphobic’ in order to make people think about the language they use and how it may be offensive to trans people. This poster was part of a trio made to decorate rooms and Western Gate Building during USI Pink Training in UCC last November. Since then, two other colleges have asked for copies of those posters to use within their own campuses.
December 26 2010 02:50 am